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Name Analyzer Explodes, Disappears from Facebook Platform (Updated)

Name Analyzer, the fastest growing application on the Facebook Platform over the last week according to AppData, has experienced some of the most explosive growth we’ve ever seen: although the first post on the app’s wall was April 16th, as of yesterday it had already reached over 10 million monthly active users to become the 9th largest application on the Facebook Platform by total reach.

However, today it has been removed from the Facebook Platform altogether. We don’t know yet if Facebook removed the app for policy violations, but that is our suspicion given the rate of growth the app experienced. We’ll let you know when Facebook gets back to us.

From what we could tell before the app was removed, Name Analyzer was primarily used by Turkish speaking users. Turkey has about 10.6 million active users on Facebook, so it’s possible that that the app rapidly penetrated the Turkish speaking audience on Facebook. The app also had an English version, but it never worked very well.

The app itself was a simple game that “analyzed” the letters in your name and then let you post the results in your Facebook stream and was monetizing through ads from SocialReach and RockYou. (Note: “The application was banned by Facebook due to many violations of their platform terms – not due to the advertisements being served,” SocialReach CEO Stephen Gill confirms to Inside Facebook.)

Name Analyzer is certainly an interesting case given the incredible pace with which it rose to prominence, apparently primarily abroad, and subsequently diappeared.

Update: Here’s Facebook’s response:

Whenever we find violations of our Platform terms or policies, we promptly notify the developers and ask for a response within a given period. Depending on the severity of the issue, it could require immediate action from us or we could give up to one week. During that time, some developers may choose to suspend their applications until they have rethought or resolved the issues. If we don’t receive a response in time, we may choose to suspend the application until we’re confident that the user experience on Facebook will be upheld.